
UNICEF PHOTO OF THE YEAR
THE AWARD 2015
Each year, UNICEF Germany and GEO Germany (from the publishing house Gruner +Jahr GmbH & Co KG) grant the “UNICEF Photo of the Year Award” to photos and photo series that best depict the personality and living conditions of children worldwide in an outstanding manner.
Macedonian Photographer Georgi Licovski is the winner of the competition “UNICEF Photo of the Year 2015”. His reportage depicts the situation of refugees at the border between Greece and Macedonia.
Greek-Macedonian border: Utter despair

© Georgi Licovski/epa
It was on August 21, 2015, on the Greek-Macedonian border, that this traumatic situation for two refugee children took place and was witnessed by photographer Georgi Licovski. During his life as a photographer, he thought he had seen his fair share of suffering, from the breakup of Yugoslavia to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians. But the unsettling situation he had to witness here moved even him and his colleagues to tears. In order to appeal to the emotions of the Macedonian border troops, some refugees send their women and children to the front lines. With the mass of people pushing from the back, children get separated from their parents and are sometimes taken across the border by strangers while their parents and relatives are unable to get through. Another tragedy within this global tragedy that starts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – and obviously doesn’t end in Europe.
According to UNICEF estimates, children make up approximately one-quarter of the 730,000 refugees arriving in the European Union through the Balkan states between January and November 2015.

© Georgi Licovski/epa
Curriculum Vitae: Georgi Licovski (epa, European Pressphoto Agency)

Interview with Georgi Licovski
"I can’t forget the children whose fasces were terrified by the chaos" - an interview with Georgi Licovski.